'In spirit?'
'Exactly. My body has remained in this arm-chair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco. After you left I sent down to Stamford's for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way about.'
'A large scale map, I presume?'
'Very large.' She unrolled one section and held it over her knee. 'Here you have the particular district which concerns us. That is Baskerville Hall in the middle.'
'With a wood round it?'
'Exactly. I fancy the Yew Alley, though not marked under that name, must stretch along this line, with the moor, as you perceive, upon the right of it. This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen, where our friend Dr. Mortimer has her headquarters. Within a radius of five miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings. Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned in the narrative. There is a house indicated here which may be the residence of the naturalist--Stapleton, if I remember right, was her name. Here are two moorland farm-houses, High Tor and Foulmire. Then fourteen miles away the great convict prison of Princetown. Between and around these scattered points extends the desolate, lifeless moor. This, then, is the stage upon which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play it again.'
'It must be a wild place.'
'Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of women ----'
'Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation.'
'The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is, what is the crime and how was it committed? Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we'll shut that window again, if you don't mind. It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions. Have you turned the case over in your mind?'
'Yes, I have thought a good deal of it in the course of the day.'
'What do you make of it?'
'It is very bewildering.'
'It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What do you make of that?'
'Mortimer said that the woman had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the alley.'
'She only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a woman walk on tiptoe down the alley?'
'What then?'
'She was running, Watson--running desperately, running for her life, running until she burst her heart and fell dead upon her face.'
'Running from what?'
'There lies our problem. There are indications that the woman was crazed with fear before ever she began to run.'
'How can you say that?'
'I am presuming that the cause of her fears came to her across the moor. If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a woman who had lost her wits would have run from the house instead of towards it. If the gipsy's evidence may be taken as true, she ran with cries for help in the direction where help was least likely to be. Then, again, whom was she waiting for that night, and why was she waiting for her in the Yew Alley rather than in her own house?'
'You think that she was waiting for someone?'
'The woman was elderly and infirm. We can understand her taking an evening stroll, but the ground was damp and the night inclement. Is it natural that she should stand for
five or ten minutes, as Dr. Mortimer, with more practical sense than I should have given her credit for, deduced from the cigar ash?'
'But she went out every evening.'
'I think it unlikely that she waited at the moor-gate every evening. On the contrary, the evidence is that she avoided the moor. That night she waited there. It was the night before she made her departure for London. The thing takes shape, Watson. It becomes coherent. Might I ask you to hand me my violin, and we will postpone all further thought upon this business until we have had the advantage of meeting Dr. Mortimer and Lady Henrietta Baskerville in the morning.'
Chapter 4
Sir Henrietta Baskerville
Our breakfast-table was cleared early, and Holmes waited in her dressing-gown for the promised interview. Our clients were punctual to their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr. Mortimer was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed woman about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. She wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of her time in the open air, and yet there was something in her steady eye and the quiet assurance of her bearing which indicated the gentlewoman.